NOTE - No DESIEN issue in July, 1996.

CONTENTS

Upfront - "no" July, 1996 DESIEN issue
Focus - "Developing and Assessing a Distance Education Course: Evil in Western Culture"
Campus Update - add new information
DE Clearinghouse - "Search Engines and Indexes"
FYI - news and reminders
Endnote: "Is Technology Defining a New Type Of Person"
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UPFRONT

There will be "no" DESIEN issue in July, 1996. The August and September issues will be the final issues of the one-year pilot period. The October issue will be an Evaluation Form for evaluation of this past year and to determine the future of DESIEN.
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FOCUS

"Developing and Assessing a Distance Education Course: Evil in Western
Culture" by

Pamela Gilbert (English, UW-Parkside) and
Ronald Mickel (History, UW-Eau Claire

With current budget constraints in higher education and with honors programs and their small classes being expensive to sustain, interactive video may have the potential to allow programs to share resources. A particularly popular and effective interdisciplinary honors course might be offered through Distance Education on two or more campuses. Moreover, when a program needs a specific disciplinary course but it is unavailable for some reason, such a course might be arranged to originate at another site. With such thoughts, we decided to explore the effectiveness of distance education technologies for honors students.

The UW System's Undergraduate Teaching Improvement Council (UTIC) provided a grant for 1995-96 for us to plan and team teach an upper-division distance education honors course focused on concepts of evil in the history of Western Culture. We taught the three-credit course on Tuesday evenings during the Spring 1996 semester using compressed video. Seventeen honors program students enrolled in the course at Eau Claire and three English majors at Parkside. Professor Gilbert, who teaches English, was at the Parkside site and Professor Mickel, who teaches history and directs the University Honors Program, was at the Eau Claire site. Gilbert visited the Eau Claire site before the start of the semester and Mickel joined Gilbert at Parkside for the final joint class session.

The course surveyed such writers and their views on evil as Sophocles, Augustine, Dante, Luther, Milton, Marlowe, Mary Shelley, Nietzsche, Freud, George Bernard Shaw, Niebuhr, and Nazi medical experimentation personnel. Student input decided topics for the final few weeks, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and horror fiction. Groups of three or four students made presentations on topics of their choosing during the last half of the course. Students were required to keep journals in which they commented on events reported each week in the media. They also selected "case studies" to analyze in a five-page paper due midway in the semester and in a ten-page final paper. Parkside created a listserv for the course and students were required to respond at least twice to each week's posted quotation.

Using grant funds, expenses were paid for the students to meet and have lunch together in Madison on a Saturday in April. We wished to provide students the opportunity to learn to know each other better and to share ideas in person outside the classroom. Had good weather been predictable earlier, this meeting might better have occurred earlier in the semester. Nevertheless, everyone found the opportunity to talk face to face with those at the other site enjoyable and very worthwhile.

While the instructors and guests did provide short background lectures, most class time was spent in discussions. The instructors manipulated the classroom cameras to zoom in on students who were speaking, to focus on herself or himself or on guests when appropriate, and to make use of the whiteboards or to present material with the overhead cameras.

The instructors particularly wished to promote cohesiveness in the class, since the two groups were separated and only saw each other on screen. The e-mail listserv, which was very highly rated by the students, served this purpose well, placing everyone in the class on an "equal footing" online. Additionally, some students remarked that they felt freer to make comments which, because of time considerations or shyness, they did not make in class. One student remarked, "By the time I think of something to say about a topic, the class has moved on to something else. But on e-mail, I can take as much time as I like to think of just what I want to say." These results are consistent with anecdotal information on using e-mail in regular class formats; in distance education courses, however, it may be even more important to provide alternative means of sustaining student discussions, especially between or among sites.

With a professor at both sites, problems were minimized in dealing with the varying semester schedules at the two institutions and with the minor technical difficulties faced. Parkside's semester began and ended a week earlier than Eau Claire's. Thus the class at Parkside met alone for its first session and Eau Claire met alone for its final session. Technical difficulties were limited to audio problems on two occasions. Technicians quite quickly remedied the problems.

Students evaluated the course through a group interview of each site led by a faculty member not associated with the course, through questionnaires at the end of the semester, and through informal remarks to the instructors. Their responses were very positive. The size of the television monitors available at UW-Parkside elicited criticism but not the technology itself. Students enjoyed having the opportunity to meet in person students from the other site. But they also valued getting to know through interactive television faculty and students at a different institution than their own. Since the course had instructors at both sites, students were hesitant to say they would enjoy a distance education course if only one instructor taught the course and that instructor was at another site. However, the course was highly successful and we hope to offer it again during the 1997-98 academic year if financial resources are available to support two instructors in the same course. If not, the course may be offered at both the UW-Eau Claire and UW-Parkside sites with only one instructor. Such an offering would answer further questions about the effectiveness of Distance education for honors programs.

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CAMPUS UPDATE

(Please add new information about your institution's distance education progress below.)

UW CENTERS -

UW-EAU CLAIRE -

UW-GREEN BAY -

UW-LA CROSSE -

UW-MADISON -

UW-MILWAUKEE -

UW-OSHKOSH -

UW-PLATTEVILLE -

UW-RIVER FALLS -

UW-PARKSIDE -

UW-STEVENS POINT -

UW-STOUT -

UW-SUPERIOR -

UW-WHITEWATER -
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FROM THE DISTANCE EDUCATION CLEARINGHOUSE
NETNEWS
Michele Jacques

"Search Engines and Indexes"

Distance Education Clearinghouse on the web at:

http://www.uwex.edu/disted/home.html

Statistics about the web are overwhelming. The size of the web is estimated to double every 5 months. How do you find the information you need when there is so much available?

One way is to use tools called search engines. Examples of search
engines and indexes include
Lycos: http://www.lycos.com/
Alta Vista: http://altavista.digital.com/
Infoseek: http://guide.infoseek.com/
Yahoo: http://www.yahoo.com/
A list of other search engines can be found at:
http://home.netscape.com/home/internet-search.cfml

The search engines are not all alike. The same search on different search engines will produce different results. It can be very confusing. You can never be guaranteed to search through "everything" on the web. The frustrations usually arise when you enter a key term and end up with 1000s of hits. Search engine home pages usually have a "Tips" section. Take a few moments to read through their suggestions on how to improve your search results. A recent article about search engines is available on the web at:
http://www.pcmag.com/issues/1513/pcmg0080.htm
It's from PC Magazine, July, 1996 and is called "Finding Your Needle in the Web's Haystack."

One way to overcome the needle in the haystack scenario is to locate a few excellent sites which will meet your own individual needs for information. Save these sites for future reference by bookmarking them. Then, when the need arises, you will be able to use them as your jumping off
point to further exploration. A listing of examples of such guides for Distance Education topics appears in a recent article from the 1996 Collaborative Communications Review, published by the International Teleconferencing Association:
http://www.uwex.edu/disted/resources.html

Finding information on the web is not a problem...finding valid, pertinent, and up-to-date information in a easy and quick manner can sometimes be a challenge. Good luck in your searching!

As always, please be sure to send me your comments, suggestions, and questions about the Distance Education Clearinghouse. I can be reached at: jacques@ics.uwex.edu or by phone at (608)265-6178. Thank you.

Michele Jacques
Project Coordinator, WWW
Distance Education Clearinghouse
Instructional Communications Systems
University of Wisconsin-Extension

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FYI

NEWS AND REMINDERS:

ICS WORKSHOPS - Instructional Communications Systems (ICS) develops Orientation and Advanced Technologies Workshops upon request. The Technologies include: audioconferencing, satellite videoconferencing, audiographics, and compressed video. Computer workshops are in the planning process. Contact: ICS 608-262-4342.

VIDEOTAPE/PRINT PACKAGE: "Breaking New Ground: Faculty Perspectives" is a 32 min. videotape and print package that focuses on five UW faculty who have successfully taught via compressed video. For an information flyer and order form send your fax # to - lehman@ics.uwex.edu.

12th ANNUAL CONFERENCE - The Madison, Wisconsin Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning will be held August 7-9, 1996. The conference theme is "Designing for Learning." Contact - Nancy Kolberg, 608-264-9689.

MAINE CONFERENCE - The University of Maine at Augusta, will hold its 10th Annual Conference Sept. 26, 27, and 28, 1996. The Conference theme is, "Yesterday's Dreams Are Today's Reality: Quality and Access in Distance Education and Training." Contact - 207-621-3170.

TELELEARNING '96 - "Distance Education - the New Focus" is scheduled for October 2-5, 1996, Chicago, Illinois. Contact - 1-800-988-4555.

TELECON XVI - Call for Papers for the annual teleconferencing user's conference, "Connecting to the Desktop," October 29-31,1996, Anaheim, California. Contact - 1-800-829-3400.

WETC - Well over 120 proposals have been received for the Wisconsin Educational Technology Conference (WETC), October 8-10, 1996, Green Bay, Wisconsin. The purpose of the conference is to advance the application of technology at all levels of education and training (pre-kindergarten through adult) in instruction, curriculum, learning resources, special needs, administration, and planning. Contact - Sandra Carman, 608-266-0001.
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ENDNOTE: " Is Technology Defining a New Type of Person?"

In "Primacy of Process: Teaching and Learning in the Computer Age," * Dr. Trent Batson, Director of Academic Technology at Gallaudet University and Dr. Randy Bass of the English Dept. of Georgetown University explore ways in which the use of telecommunications is enabling teachers and students to more directly experience the actual process of how knowledge is discovered, created, shared and shaped. They see information technology accelerating, "... the move toward process-focus and perhaps providing a way to more directly experience the 'invisible mental process' of learning."

It is not, they state, that technologies create the emphasis on process, but that they "enable its visibility." They make the process "public." "Whether through the capacity to access and manipulate data, or the enhanced ability to collaborate and communicate with peers, information and communication technologies "foreground process." In addition, the technologies and the way
we use them create hybrids, dissolving boundaries and altering the way we take in and synthesize information.Further, new technologies provide a "...bigger and more visible space in which to conduct intellectual work."

As we become more acutely aware of the process of technologies and of knowledge processes, we will "change the way we think about the way we think. This, in turn, will lead to new ways of knowing, teaching and learning, enhancing levels of perception and creating a new type of learner and facilitator.

*This article appeared on the American Association for Higher Education ListServ, AAHESGIT, February 29, 1996, prior to its publication in the March/April edition of Change Magazine.
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DESIEN ARCHIVE: An Archive has been created for past issues and
interaction comments. Locate at: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/desien.html

DESIEN has been created to encourage information exchange and discussion of distance education issues concerned with: 1) Symposium team progress and institution course/program development, 2)faculty/ team development, 3)technology, 4) policy, 5) funding, and 6) research
among participants, presenters, and organizers of the 1994 UW-Extension/UW System Distance Education Symposium. Other List recipients are also welcome to join in with information contributions and discussion.

Each monthly issue will focus on an "area of interest", feature a regular column on the Distance Education Clearinghouse by Michele Jacques, contain an FYI section, and list future areas of focus. Your continuous input through updates, features, questions, and dialogue will be instrumental in helping DESIEN evolve and grow.

DESIEN is a one-year pilot project, September, 1995 to September, 1996 and will be evaluated at the end of that time. The coordinators of DESIEN are Rosemary Lehman and Pat Takemoto. The owner of DESIEN is Rosemary Lehman, lehman@ics.uwex.edu. Please contact Rosemary if you have concerns or problems.
ListServ: DESIEN-List@uwex.edu
Owner: lehman@ics.uwex.edu